Victoria’s Secret will close up to 50 stores this year, parent company L Brands announced on Wednesday.
The lingerie retailer will permanently close 30 to 50 stores in the US and Canada in 2021, after 241 stores closing in 2020. By the end of this year, Victoria’s Secret could have fewer than 800 stores, up from 1,100 at the beginning of 2020, according to CNN.
USA Today reports L Brands also plans to open 49 new Bath & Body Works stores in the US and one in Canada, according to the most recent quarterly earnings. The new locations will be ‘almost completely outside the mall’, while up to 40 malls will close; its total number of stores remains about 1,736 in the U.S. and Canada.
L Brands did not say which locations will close when.
Victoria’s Secret currently has 47 locations in New York State, including Pink stores, with stores in Syracuse’s Destiny USA, Albany’s Crossgates Mall, Buffalo’s Walden Galleria and the Eastview Mall near Rochester. Bath & Body Works has locations at the same malls, plus additional stores at locations such as the Great Northern Mall and the Shops at Ithaca Mall.
L Brands is also still planning to eliminate Victoria’s Secret, which has struggled in recent years, in a separate company in the next six months. The New York Times reports that Goldman Sachs will soon start setting up formal buyout firms over a possible takeover.
“In the next six months, we will continue to separate the two companies and complete a dual track to prepare for an impact or a sale,” the company said in a statement.
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